The Wilderness Within

Parshas Bamidbar

Posted on May 27, 2025 (5785) By Rabbi Naftali Reich | Series: Legacy | Level: Beginner

Was it an accident of geography that a barren wilderness lay between Egypt and the Promised Land? Was it an accident of geography that the Torah was given to the Jewish people on a rocky mountain in a parched and desolate land? Would history have taken a different course had they encountered wooded mountains and verdant pastures when they emerged from bondage in Egypt?

 

This week’s Torah reading seems to indicate that there is a significant connection. The commentators observe that the reading begins with the words “And Hashem spoke to Moses in the Sinai wilderness.” Why was it necessary for the Torah to tell us the obvious, that the Torah was transmitted in the wilderness? These words, explain the commentators, contain a powerful implied message. In order for a person to make himself a receptacle for the Torah, he must first render himself a wilderness. In other words, he must distance himself from the concerns and pressures of society and live a more insular life.

 

What exactly does this mean? Are we meant to seek the wisdom of Torah in pristine corner of the world, far from the sounds and smells of civilization? Can’t the Torah be discovered in the synagogues and study halls of great urban centers where millions of Jewish people live? Of course, it can. The Torah is identifying the mental rather than the geographic locales in which Torah can be found.

 

The Hebrew word for wilderness, midbar, reveals a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, it refers to a remote and isolated place. At the same time, however, it is closely related to the word medaber, one who speaks or communicates, which is quite the opposite of isolation.

 

A person who learns Torah has to function on two levels. He must focus on becoming a medaber, a person who interacts with others and communicates to them the values and ideals of the eternal Torah. But first he must fortify himself and become a midbar, a person insulated against the pernicious influences and peer pressures of society, a person who stands on his principles and refuses to compromise in order to curry favor with others.

 

The Torah does not seek to make people into hermits and monastics. Rather, the paradigm of a true Torah Jew is one who brings the light of Torah to society with a sincere smile on his face and tempered steel in his heart, a gregarious recluse.

 

An idealistic young man came to seek the advice of a great sage. “I want to change the world,” he said. “I want to make it a better place. Where exactly should I concentrate my efforts?”

 

The sage smiled. “You remind a little of myself when I was young,” he said. “At first, I wanted to change the world, but I discovered that I could not. Then I decided I would at least change my community, but I discovered that I could not. Then I decided that perhaps I could at least change my family, but that too was beyond my ability. Finally, I realized I should at least try to change myself, and that has been a lifetime struggle. But I believe that if I had started with changing myself I might have been able to do something for the world as well.”

 

In our own lives, there is practically no spot in the developed world where we are not blanketed by an aura of decadence and corruption that seeks to penetrate our very souls. So, what are we to do? Are we to abandon our homes and careers and go off to a desert island? Not at all. But we must always be acutely aware of the spiritual dangers that lurk everywhere we turn. We must imbue ourselves with the spirit of Torah until it becomes like an impenetrable suit of armor. Only when we are thus fortified can we venture forth to bring the message of the Torah to society at large.

 

Text Copyright © 2009 by Rabbi Naftali Reich and Torah.org.

Rabbi Reich is on the faculty of the Ohr Somayach Tanenbaum Education Center.

 

Always Small

Parshas Bamidbar

Posted on June 5, 2019 (5779) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

Population numbers have always meant a great deal in human history. We do not find tribes or influential societies that were composed only of a very small number of people. All the great tribes in the ancient and modern world were built on large populations that would be able to fuel the economy of the Empire and provide sufficient numbers of soldiers for its armies.

 

Naturally the exception to all of this has been the story of the Jewish people. The Torah itself warned Israel in advance that they never would be numerous, relatively speaking. The Torah did not mean this as a curse or as a completely negative fact. Rather, it was a simple declaration as to the price, so to speak, of persecution, poverty and powerlessness. Yet the very same verse in the Torah guaranteed the survival of the Jewish people and the eventual triumph over all would-be adversaries.

 

In light of this it seems surprising that in this fourth book of the Bible, a count of the Jewish people is taken a number of times, and that count is detailed to the ultimate degree. If numbers do not matter when it comes to Jewish society and the story of the Jewish people, then why did the Torah put such an emphasis upon numbers and detail for us regarding the exact population of the Jewish people at the time of Moses?

 

I think that perhaps the answer to this lies in the statistics and numbers that the Torah details for us in this week’s Torah reading. The number of the Jewish people at the time of Moses constituted over 600,000 males between the ages of 20 and 60. By adding into this some female population, those over 60 and those under 20, we arrive at a population figure of perhaps 3 million people. If there were 3 million Jews that existed 3300 years ago, simply by natural increase and according to trends of population, there should be hundreds of millions of Jews existing in today’s world. Yet the actual count of Jews in our world, at its most optimistic level, is about 15 million people.

 

This fact, when seen in the background of the account of the Jewish people when they were in the desert of Sinai, and the fact that numerically speaking we have been at pretty much of a standstill over all of these long centuries, is itself the confirmation of the words of the Torah that we will be a small people in terms of population.

 

Certainly, there are many rational, practical and correct reasons that are advanced for the lack of growth in Jewish population – persecution, conversions, forced and otherwise, disease, poverty, and the continual erosion of the Jewish population by assimilation and a low birthrate.

 

But no matter what reasons we accept to account for this historical anomaly, it is clear that Heaven, in its usual hidden way, somehow accounts for this as well.

 

Shabbat shalom

Rabbi Berel Wein

 

Human Nature

Parshas Bamidbar

Posted on May 22, 2012 (5772) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

The book of Bamidbar is perhaps one of the saddest, so to speak, of all of the Holy Scriptures.

 

Whereas the book of Shemot, which records for us the sin of the Golden Calf also gives us pause, it concludes with the final construction of the Mishkan and G-d’s Presence, so to speak, resting within the encampment of Israel. But the book of Bamidbar, which begins on a high note of numerical accomplishment and the seemingly imminent entry of the Jewish people into the Land of Israel, ends on a very sour note. It records the destruction of the entire generation including its leadership without their entrance into the Promised Land.

 

The narrative of the book of Bamidbar ( Numbers) tells us of rebellion and constant carping, military defeats and victories, false blessings, human prejudices and personal bias. But the Torah warned us in its very first chapters that “this is the book of human beings.” And all the weaknesses exhibited by Israel in the desert of Sinai, as recorded for us in the book of Bamidbar, are definitely part of the usual human story and nature.

 

Over the decades that I have taught this book of Bamidbar to students and congregants of mine, invariably many of them have then asked me incredulously: “How could the Jewish people have behaved in such a manner?” I cannot speak for that generation of Jews as described in the book of Bamidbar but I wonder to myself “How can so many Jews in our generation relate to the existence of the State of Israel in our time so cavalierly?

 

How do we tolerate the cruelties that our one-size-fits-all school systems inflict on the ‘different’ child? How do we subject our daughters to the indignities of the current matchmaking process?

 

How, indeed!?” And my answer to myself always is that for the great many of us, human nature trumps common sense, logic and true Torah values. I imagine that this may have been true of the generation of the book of Bamidbar as well.

 

One of the wonders of the book of Bamidbar is that the count of the Jewish people at the end of the forty years of living in the desert was almost exactly the same as it was at the beginning of their sojourn there when they left Egyptian bondage. Though the following is certainly not being proposed by me as an answer or explanation to this unusual fact, I have always thought that this is a subtle reminder to us that that no matter how great the experiences, no matter how magnificent the miracles, no matter how great the leaders, human nature with all of its strengths and weaknesses basically remains the same.

 

It is not only that the numbers don’t change much, the people and the generations didn’t and don’t change much either. Human nature remains pretty constant. But our task is to recognize that and channel our human nature into productive and holy actions and behavior – to bend to a nobility of will and loyalty. Only by recognizing the propensity of our nature will we be able to accomplish this necessary and noble goal.

 

Shabat shalom and Chag Sameach,

Rabbi Berel Wein